5200 x 3454 px | 44 x 29,2 cm | 17,3 x 11,5 inches | 300dpi
Data acquisizione:
23 gennaio 2009
Ubicazione:
Loughborough, Leicestershire, England UK
Altre informazioni:
Chinchillas are rabbit-sized, crepuscular rodents native to the Andes mountains in South America. Along with their relatives, viscachas, they belong to the family Chinchillidae. The animal (whose name literally means "little Chincha") is named after the Chincha people of the Andes, who wore its soft and dense fur. By the end of the 19th century, chinchillas had become quite rare due to hunting for their fur. They have a fur that is of wonderful softness" The first reliable report of successful breeding attempt in captivity comes from Frederico Albert (1900), who was director of the zoological and botanical research station at Santiago, Chile. He reports in his article "La Chinchilla" about a certain Francisco Irrazaval in Santiago who had received a pair of chinchillas in 1895. The first chinchilla was born that same year and the pair continued to produce 2 litters a year until the outbreak of an epidemic during the summer of 1896 ruined this excellent breeding success, and all the animals, 13 at that time, died within a period of two months. Mathias F. Chapman, a mining engineer from California, was working in Chile in 1918 when he purchased a chinchilla as a pet and took a liking to it. He applied to the Chilean government for permission to capture and transport several animals to the US. Chinchillas were already close to extinction from humans killing them for the fur trade. The Chilean government was reluctant to grant trapping permission, but Chapman persisted, and eventually the government allowed him to catch them. Chapman and a group of men searched the mountain for three years and caught only eleven chinchillas. He then took the 12, 000 foot climb down over a period of twelve months so the chinchillas could acclimate to the changing environment. He then brought the eleven wild chinchillas he had captured to the United States for breeding, where he started the first chinchilla farm.
